Am I the only one thinking this is just Amazon trying to get some free publicity.
The problems involved are enormous, not just technical, imagine having to have a secure landing space, and signing for delivery, and waiting in for the drone delivery.
Ultra cool would be if they could do a drone delivery of my new Mavic.

It "may" safely deliver the package but what unsafe issues is it creating? Parcel falls on someone / drone falls out of the sky / kids throw stones at it / etc etc big fail for practical purposes IMO, may work for select customers in their locality - subject to conditions lol. Stick with the van driver

It "may" safely deliver the package but what unsafe issues is it creating? Parcel falls on someone / drone falls out of the sky / kids throw stones at it / etc etc big fail for practical purposes IMO, may work for select customers in their locality - subject to conditions lol. Stick with the van driver

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It would be _very_ select. As to the accidents that may happen... what about driving a truck? That would be far more dangerous.

How it is set up now, the person puts a landing pad on their property and the drone lands on this. It would use a camera to land on the pad.

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Well in the UK, only a very small percentage of the population, I would guess less than 10%, would be able to provide a safe landing area, most gardens would be too small or too many trees etc, and most large towns and cities are too congested, I have a large rear garden, but almost never try to land or take off, largely to avoid annoying the neighbours. Can you imagine how annoying an Amazon drone delivery would be, now just the reversing beeps from the van driver are bad enough.
I still think it is a gimmick to promote Amazon.

Lots of trees and bushes could be a big delivery issue as well as small yards and apartments/condos. Or someone tailing it knowing it will land somewhere and might be unguarded (No owner at home, or delivery driver either.) and snag whatever.

Then we have the hillbillies who like to shoot stuff flying in 'their airspace' (ahem) to deal with in the USA, since the feds aren't dealing with them. Seems a bad plan overall.

I could see this system being used in a closed area facility where packages, documents, etc., were delivered to different areas
on or in a campus type set-up. For example, It would be neat to deliver needed parts, plans or whatever from the design department
all the way across a manufacturing facility to the fabrication department. In a setting where it would not endanger those beneath it,
I could see it working.

"A cross-Government team supported by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has provided Amazon with permissions to explore three key innovations: beyond line of sight operations in rural and suburban areas, testing sensor performance to make sure the drones can identify and avoid obstacles, and flights where one person operates multiple highly-automated drones."

"As the UK’s aviation safety regulator, the CAA will be fully involved in this work to explore the potential for safe use of drones beyond line of sight. The outcomes of these tests will help inform the development of future policy and regulation in this area."

Pisses me off that the plan is for one operator to operate several drones beyond LOS, but we can't do one operator with one aircraft beyond LOS missions (and we won't be carrying 2kg of cargo)

And they'll be able to fly over "congested areas", something we aren't allowed to do either.